Name: Okra Salad
Ingredients: young okra pods; vinegar; coarse sea salt; black pepper; plain French dressing

Why it works: Okra and pepper work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 727 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Okra Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Boil the young okra pods whole until tender.
Let the okra cool.
Dress the cooled okra with vinegar, coarse sea salt, and black pepper, or use plain French dressing.
Serve very cold.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

Okra + peppertop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together727 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,814 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Okra + vinegartop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together97 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).